Berlin - 11 Behaimstrasse (Charlottenburg)

Summary: 11 Behaimstrasse (Charlottenburg Locality of Berlin)
In 1889, a small Jewish association calling itself the Jewish Religious Community of Charlottenburg (it had several hundred members) was part of the official Berlin Jewish Community, whose purpose was to oversee Jewish community and religious life in the whole city of Berlin. The members of the association nevertheless wished to pray at their own nearby synagogue; therefore a house of worship that seated 140 men and 140 women was inaugurated in 1890 on a street that was then called Schulstrasse, but was later renamed Behaimstrasse (the synagogue was the oldest in the Charlottenburg area of Berlin). The services were liberal in format, and the Romantic- style architecture of the synagogue included a large, central wheel-shaped window and a Star of David on top of the tower.
In 1937, the official Berlin Jewish Community, whose purpose was to oversee Jewish community and religious life in the whole city, took over the Behaimstrasse synagogue. The building, badly damaged on Pogrom Night (November 1938), was expropriated in 1941. It sustained heavy damage during the bombings of World War II, and was torn down in 1957.